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Showing posts from October, 2009

Zappos - Have Fun, Make Customers Happy, Money Follows

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Last month, I attended Shop.org annual summit which is the biggest gathering of prominent online retailers in the country. Since the event was in Las Vegas, I took the opportunity to visit Zappos headquarters in Henderson, NV for a company tour. Zappos is a fascinating company. It was started in 1999 and booked $1B+ in sales last year. A few months ago, it was acquired by Amazon for ~$940M. The company mainly sells shoes with laser sharp focus on customer service. The company tag line is "Powered by Service". The story is that the Zappos founder, Nick Swinmurn , could not find a pair of shoes he was looking for and there was no online retailer which specialized in wide selection of shoes. So, he started Zappos . Today, Zappos has 4M+ items in its warehouse in Kentucky, 1200 brands and 200,000 styles, and 900,000 UPCs . Zappos is known for wide selection, fast and free delivery, free return shipments, and 365 day return policy. Behind the scenes, there are three m

Possibility

Anything that can be done, will be done eventually.

Advice on advice

Do not act on advice from experts or from your friends if it does not make sense to you. People give advice based on their past experiences and their view of the world. No one knows your circumstances better than you do. There is an old saying in India, "listen to everyone and do what makes sense to you".